Toshiba is putting the finishing touches on a brand new color e-readers to compete with Fujitsu in the land of the Rising Sun. It is officially due out on February 10th and taps into the Toshiba BookPlace ecosystem.
The Toshiba BookPlace features a 7 inch TFT LCD display with a resolution of 600×1024 pixels. It is powered by a Freescale i.MX535 1 GHZ CPU Processor and 1 GB of RAM. Internal memory is fairly solid at 8 GB and you can enhance it up to 32 GB via the Micro SD Card. Battery life is fairly solid at around 8 hours of continuous use.
This new e-reader will feature the Google Android OS with version 2.3.2 being the firmware they are shipping it with. It is fully touchscreen which means you can turn pages by swipes and gestures. One of the cool things it has going for it is the inclusion of many physical buttons. You have a dedicated home, volume, menu, and other functions you will use daily.
This is an e-reader first and foremost, but does have access to the internet via WIFI. You can surf the internet and do all of your daily tasks. It has a built in speaker and 3.5 mm headphone jack to listen to music or audiobooks.
This device seems good and might do well in the often fickle Japanese market. It is priced rather high and this might be a huge barrier at $284 US to get your hands on one.
via Toshiba Japan
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
